Our friend Jeff Collins,and another friend, Mike Todryk, of IWCO Direct have a great discussion on how Mike was able to take a company with an enormous variety of printing devices & technologies, and transform it so that they know where their color is, they have their color under control, and they maintain a "shared neutral appearance" - through the wonder of G7. Mike shares details about the software they used, and what they did to improve procedures for saving time, money and hitting industry standard color. A special bonus near the end includes the mistakes that brand owners commonly make when communicate color to printers.

For years this blog has been proudly telling our profiling secrets to all who would listen. One of the policies that makes for a better profile, for certain papers and fabrics, is the use of polarized measurements. Our president, Steve Upton, has been hammering on the instrument makers for years to please include polarizing capability into their new instruments. One company that had seemed deaf to our pleas has been X-Rite.

Turns out, maybe they were listening after all! X-Rite recently announced a new i1Pro: The i1Pro 3 Plus. This model is made specifically to take measurements of textiles and other unusual materials. Important features include:

-Polarization filter that enables the instrument to take M3 measurements

-A larger, 8mm aperture to get better sampling of fabric patterns

-The instrument can support transmission scanning for backlit film.

-The IO table has been updated to support this new i1Pro 3 Plus, and now enables measuring backlit materials.

The new i1Pro 3 Plus and the new IO table are slated to be available in July, 2019.

Microsoft recently announced that they are in development of a new Xbox gaming console. Those who hang on these news items scoured the daily videos prior to the announcement, to see if Microsoft gave any advanced clues. In the videos were screen elements that looked like "R 255" "G 86" and such. It turns out they were leaving a clue about the internal code name for the new gaming console: It's called "Scarlett" and the RGB values they left as a clue were: 255, 36, 0. How about that?! A color enthusiast can be one step ahead of his friends when it comes to guessing code names of upcoming gaming consoles!

If you are a card-carrying color geek, you probably already know that you do not define the color scarlet merely using the RGB numbers 255, 36, 0. RGB numbers are merely device values and don't in themselves describe a color unless they are accompanied by a printing condition or profile. (In a similar way, the number "4" on a toaster does not by itself tell you what color toast you're going to get.)

However, the illustration below shows that 255, 36, 0 in the ProPhotoRGB color space for example, is a much more saturated color than 255, 36, 0 in sRGB. It's always a good policy to define your terms!

The article is chock-full of interesting bits of info about color gamuts. Learn what can be done to increase a printer's gamut, what does not work, how different systems like xCMYK & CMYKRGB compare, and get an "insider's view" of how gamut volume calculations are made, all by the creator of ColorThink himself!

Are you in the Seattle area, want to learn color management like a pro and become certified? Then check out this 3 day paid event! SGIA, famous for their successful Boot Camp series nationally will conduct a Boot Camp training on April 2-4, 2019 at DCG One in Seattle. CHROMiX is proudly sponsoring. It's rare for a national group like the SGIA to come through the Pacific NorthWest, so take advantage! Some CHROMiX folks will stop in too. Rick and Pat will put in an appearance.